Views and analysis of Chinese politics and policy from inside China, outside the Beijing and Shanghai beltways

Saturday, 18 June 2016

Filling In Some Empty Spaces

Management of a large Chinese city such as
Nanjing isn’t easy.

There’s the growing population---fueled in
large measure by the influx of countryside residents—putting an enormous strain
on infrastructure and social services. There’s also a sputtering national economy,
which means that tax revenue is at risk as jobs disappear; plus, Beijing
becomes reluctant to part with monies that would usually be allocated to assist
urban areas because it has fewer funds to disburse. The summer season, which
always brings additional challenges to Nanjing because of the heat and demands
on the electrical grid, is complicated this year because
of increased flooding upriver from the city.

That often meant that the Nanjing military
leadership was able to call on Beijing’s support, especially when its
commercial and land holdings in the city and the adjoining suburbs were set to
be affected by the city’s urban development, arguing that its
daily operations or housing situation shouldn’t be disrupted. When Nanjing
political authorities wanted access or egress to military properties for new
roads or subways, the military resisted; it’s literally never been known for
yielding ground locally. In that respect at least, Nanjing can sometimes be seen
not so much of a metropolis that houses major military bases as a set of armed forces
establishments interrupted by a city.

Over the past year however, as President Xi
Jinping has pressed
the Chinese military to accept far-reaching reforms—the local political authority
of the Nanjing military seems to have started to erode. Whereas Nanjing had
been at the core of the military system, now it is simply an important part of
a more integrated command and control system that doesn’t
revolve around regions, but “battle areas”. Consequently, the power of
Nanjing’s military leadership to petition Beijing in matters of contention with
the local authorities is much less than it had been.

One example of this development is in the
area of civil defense—or more broadly, what officials call “civil air defense
affairs” [人防工作]—that is, work involving the
administration of facilities built to shield residents against attack from the
air.

These sorts of facilities in many Chinese
cities, including
Beijing, were built in response to Mao’s call in the 1960s for regional
governments to protect the population in the event of a nuclear attack from
abroad. Nanjing is something of an exception because the shelters constructed
here include an extensive underground system of bomb shelters, military
bunkers, underground storage spaces for arms caches, and a subterranean
transport system. Because Nanjing’s arrangements were also designed to protect
command centers, troops, and military equipment, they are usually far larger
than the standard city.

A recurring question for Nanjing has been
what to do with these facilities. Beginning in the late 1980s, a few shelters
were opened to the public, converted to dance halls, roller-skating rinks,
karaoke, small establishments selling fruit juices and soda—especially popular
in Nanjing’s sweltering summer, given the lack of air conditioning. In the
1990s, as the city followed Beijing’s instruction to build a market-based
economy, some of the civil defense sites in Nanjing featured year-round
restaurants and arcades, but they turned out to be less inviting as they were
often damp and dark during other seasons; residents also had greater choices as
reform took a firmer hold, and the novelty of accessing previously restricted
military shelters had largely worn off. In any event, only a dozen or so of
these underground facilities were made public.

Moreover, as Nanjing grew in these decades
and both broader and taller
buildings began to dominate the urban landscape, there was a need for
deeper pilings and foundations to be sunk into what is a rather wet substratum
(due to the city’s proximity to the Yangtze River). Often, construction firms
would spend months pumping out tens of thousands of liters of water, only to
expose sections of these underground shelters, many of which turned out to be
filled with military equipment that had to be removed with construction halted
for weeks or more. Some of the larger construction firms in Nanjing became
military-owned, in part to deal with these special circumstances.

Now the situation is even more complicated, a
collision of national initiatives and the local conditions.

On the one hand, the various underground
shelters shouldn’t be converted wholly to commercial ends, the NDRC admonishes,
but coordinated in such a way so that national and local emergency services can
still access them for their own use (largely unspecified, though likely as
temporary shelter and storing supplies) without the military necessarily having
priority, and
educate residents about their utility if a civilian disaster should strike.

On the other hand, this decision also means
that facilities previously devoted to protection in the event of a military
attack are best used for other purposes.

The question is, what purposes?And that’s where the local angle comes in.

Nanjing, like many cities, has a problem with
cars: in particular, with parking, more than traffic. Local media reports that
many of the existing civilian defense shelters can be used for parking—possibly as many as
5000 spaces---thereby easing some of the urban congestion.

Not surprisingly, the Nanjing military isn’t
quite as enthused, pointing
out that “in this new situation, the issue of civil air defense itself has
yet to be resolved.” Which is to say, what happens to the requirement that the
military is supposed to provide some sort of defense or recovery from air
attack?

Meanwhile, on the local government side, the
issue of how to manage the new spaces when they are provided is still being debated.

In China’s provinces, policy battles aren’t
about accruing authority; they’re about not losing too much of it when Beijing
makes a major decision and officials below have to adapt. To those looking for
high-level power plays or political combat, how to best utilize some soon-to-be
empty spaces may not seem very important. But from the standpoint of local
governance, these are the sorts of struggles that fill the day.